by J G Alva
“You haven’t told either of us what it is you do, Yilmaz,” Rebekah said, looking sidelong at Nick. She looked around at the boat. “You must be very successful at it, whatever it is.”
Yilmaz smiled.
“I have many businesses, Rebekah. Hotels, cafés, restaurants. I have recently invested in a Greek airline, but now I am not so sure it was a good idea. Airline travel is a much tough business – many people are doing it, a lot of competition. And it is an expensive business, with many costs: there is fuel, people, planes, repairs. Uh.” He flapped his hands as if it was all too much. “I must hire good men to make a business good.”
“To make a profit,” Nick said.
Yilmaz nodded at Nick.
“Just so.”
“How did you get started?” Rebekah asked. “Did you always have money? I mean, was your family rich?”
“No,” Yilmaz said, shaking his head.
"Nosey," Nick said to Rebekah.
She smiled.
"Sorry," she said to Yilmaz. "I was just curious."
Yilmaz smiled indulgently.
"It is okay. No, we did not have money, my family. We were poor. When I was young, Greece was in civil war. A lot of fighting. Very few people had money, many people were poor. My father was very high up in the ELAS – uh, the Greek National Liberation Army – but he was killed in the fighting when I was very young, and we became much poorer. You must understand, life was very difficult. I used to steal food so that my mother and my two brothers – who were younger than me – could eat. Once I was caught, and my arm was broken.” Yilmaz touched his left arm. “It was difficult times. When I was some years older, I joined a gang. It was a good way to survive. We sold drugs, fourteen year old boys on bikes with much drugs in bags. We dealt with the Turkish, and sold also to men from eastern Europe. This was not such a good thing to be in. There were many boys younger than myself, and a lot of them were killed. There were men in charge, hard men, and many boys, and they did not worry about losing one, or two, or twenty boys. There were always other boys, wanting to join the gangs.” Yilmaz paused, and there was a sadness in his eyes. “I did bad things. Many bad things.” He looked at them, spread his hands. “You must understand. I was a boy only. I had to feed my mother, and my two brothers. I did not know any other way to do this but in the way I was told in the gangs. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I did them anyway. For this I can make no excuses.” His face was unhappy, and he rubbed at his mouth with a blocky, calloused hand. “I was only with them for two years when I had enough money to move my family, and to buy a small café.
“My whole family lived and worked in the café. That was all we did, work, work, work. There was nothing else to do. And then when the café was making money, we bought another café. More work, huh? And then a restaurant. Still more work. We were crazy for work. The crazy family of Karipidis, they used to say. And then there was money to buy more restaurants, two more. Then a small hotel. And then other hotels. Many hotels.”
He shrugged, spread his hands: that was the story.
“How many hotels do you have?” Rebekah asked, wide eyed.
Yilmaz shrugged.
“I do not know. Now I have companies that buy hotels. I am not able to always remember how many hotels they buy. There is too many.”
“Wow,” Rebekah said, looking at Nick.
“It’s confirmed,” Nick said, raising his glass to Yilmaz. “He’s rich.”
◆◆◆
Yilmaz offered Nick a cigar but he declined with a shake of his head. Yilmaz lit the cigar and then leaned back in the chair and smoked it comfortably, the smoke rolling languidly through the air, the smell touching some memory of Nick’s that filled him with melancholy.
“How did you two meet?” Nick asked.
Yilmaz and Agathe shared a look and smiled, and it was easy for Nick to see that they were still very much in love.
“I bought a hotel in Preveza. Agathe was the – how do you say? Chairman?”
“Manager,” Nick offered.
“Manageress,” Rebekah corrected.
Yilmaz clicked his fingers, pointed at Rebekah.
“Manageress. Yes. She was a very good manageress, perhaps too good for this small hotel. And she was very proud woman. She did not want to marry old Yilmaz.”
Agathe shook her head, smiling.
“I had worked hard for the job, yes? Everyone was thinking I would marry him for his money but I said, no, I do not want his money, I have money myself, good job, and I love the job very much, such a good job, but Yilmaz would not stop. There were flowers, chocolates. Many gifts.”
“I bought her a...little dog,” Yilmaz said, from behind a cloud of cigar smoke, making the shape in the air with his hands. “A little puppy.”
“A little puppy,” Agathe exclaimed, as if it was the craziest thing she had ever heard of. “I could not care for it, I did not have time, but it was beautiful puppy.”
“She could not resist the little puppy,” Yilmaz said, smiling.
“I only went to dinner with him so that he might stop. But he would not. Always with the calls, the flowers.”
“You marry me just to stop the calls, the flowers?” Yilmaz asked, frowning, and the table erupted with laughter.
Agathe put a hand on his arm.
“I married you because you are good man. And I was much in love with you.”
Yilmaz smiled fatuously. He looked at Nick.
“She could not resist Yilmaz,” he corrected, to Nick, and there was more laughter.
◆◆◆
Nick had been given a small cabin near the front of the ship, Rebekah a cabin toward the back, near Kate’s room.
Nick had been feeling sleepy when he was shown to the cabin, in part because of the talk and the food and the drink, but also in part because of the events of the day, but as soon as his head hit the pillow he knew he could not sleep. He had slept for two years on hard ground, and the bed was so comfortable he knew it would take him a long time to get used to it. And of course he had not slept without Rebekah by his side for just as long. The absence of her was like a live thing in the room with him, a void floating at his elbow in the dark. He wondered what she was thinking, in her own cabin at the other end of the boat. Of course he couldn’t go to her. She was nineteen, and they were guests on this boat, but God he ached for her, to hold her, to touch her.
Miserable, irritated, he pulled the sheets off the bed and laid them on the floor of the cabin but that didn’t work either. Too damn soft.
He gave up after an hour and went up on deck, stood at the railing, looked out in to the night to see if he could make out their island, but he couldn’t, it was too far behind them.
He turned around and stared at the darkened deck, at the dim shapes of the table and the chairs. Off to his left a red light appeared suddenly, and it took him some moments to realise it was the end of a cigarette burning. Then he smelled it, the cigar.
“You having trouble sleeping as well?” Nick asked, smiling, moving to where Yilmaz had pulled a chair up to the starboard side railing.
Yilmaz did not speak for some time. It was hard to see his expression in the dark, and when he puffed on the cigar the glow at its tip didn’t illuminate enough of his features to help.
“I do not believe that another ship with men carrying guns is coming, but I was thinking that I will just sit here to make sure this is not so.” He paused, and the silence spun out, soft and easy. When Yilmaz spoke again, Nick almost jumped. “When the boat came, I did not see it. I did not see it. I thought only that they were local fishermen. And then I am seeing that they are wearing guns, and knives.” Yilmaz looked at Nick. “A man must protect his family. This is what he must do. But when they came...what could I do? They had guns. To try to stop them was to be killed, and then how would that have helped Agathe and Kate? I offered much money, but they did not care. They hit me” – he touched his forehead, the wound now only a dark lump at his hairline – “an
d I could do nothing. I could do nothing, Nick. Do you know the feelings that I am having because of this? I would have torn them apart with my hands, if I should be strong enough. But I am an old man.” He sighed softly, his shoulders slumping. “Had you not arrived when you did, had you not been a man who is – how you say? – angry, desperate, yes? If we had not gone to this cove but another...” Yilmaz shook his head. “Things happen for reasons, my friend. I did not always think so. I was forced to watch that man take my daughter below, hit my wife, throw guns in the faces of Yilmaz and his family, but I know this is happening for a reason. It is my fault. I believed that nothing could touch me. Yilmaz Karipidis, king of the mountain. Ha! Now I know that this is not so. I am but a man, with only so much time left.” He held his fingers an inch apart. “Now my eyes are open once more. You were put on the island for a reason, Nicholas Mitchell. Maybe you cannot see what that is yet, but I think I am knowing. There is a purpose to things – this I believe. This I have seen. You cannot deny it.”
Nick moved to the railing, put his hands on it. He felt tired, but not in his body; it was more of an emotional tiredness, that made his reactions slow and fuzzy.
“I don’t know if I agree that I was put on that island for a reason,” Nick said, “but I am glad that something good came out of it: that I was able to help you and your family. When you needed it the most.”
Yilmaz paused.
“I am not sure that you were on the island to help only myself and my family,” Yilmaz said slowly.
Nick frowned.
“What do you mean?”
Yilmaz gestured at Nick.
“Your friend – no, your business partner. What is his name?”
“Michael Ross.”
“Yes. That is it. Michael Ross.”
“I hate him, Yilmaz. I don’t think I’ve ever hated someone this much. It turns my blood sour. And I know that I can’t let him get away with what he did. And that it is up to me to stop him.”
Tell him about Toad, his mind whispered. Tell him about evil Toady – but the words would not come. He hung his head.
Yilmaz got up and clapped him on the shoulder. Cigar smoke wafted over Nick.
“You will not be alone in this my friend. I swear to you that I will do as much as is possible to help. We have come to be known to each other for a reason, Nicholas Mitchell. What you have done, saving me and my family from those men, those animals...this was part of why we have come together, here, now, in this place. But those men were only animals. I am thinking that we have come together because of something more...evil. Do you understand?”
Nick turned his head to look at Yilmaz’s face, hidden in shadow.
“Michael Ross?”
Yilmaz nodded.
“Yes. Believe me when I tell you this: I will do all I can to help you to stop him.”
Nick laughed softly in the darkness.
“Can you give me my life back?” He asked.
Yilmaz cocked his head.
“I do not know. But I have money, and I know it is much easy to do many things with money than if you are having no money at all. Go to bed. Try to sleep. Tomorrow is Mahé, and you will need all your strength.”
Yilmaz clapped him on the shoulder again and Nick nodded, too weak to argue.
◆◆◆
He was only dozing when he heard the door in the darkness, and came instantly awake.
Soft footsteps circled the bed, and a small figure crept through the shadows.
“Nick?”
Rebekah.
He pulled the covers back, jumped out of bed and grabbed her in the dark. He hit her forehead with his hand accidentally.
“Ow,” she said, half laughing.
“Sorry,” Nick said, laughing himself, and kissed her, wrapping his arms around her.
“That’s it. Hit a girl when she’s down.”
She was wearing silk pyjamas that were a little too long in both the arms and the legs. They swayed together, their mouths hungrier on each other than they had been at dinner. Nick had known that they would not sleep together because of various social niceties and supposedly important things, but in that moment they were swept up in their need for each other, and didn’t care about anything else in the world except that need.
◆◆◆
After their love making was over, she lay on him as she had done on the island, her head under his chin, an arm across his chest, a leg over his thigh. It was the closest they could get to each other without compromising the other’s breathing.
Nick said, “we...we can’t be like this in Mahé.”
Rebekah was silent.
“Or anywhere else for that matter.”
“Why?” She asked, in a small, hurt voice.
“You know why.”
Her silence was a confirmation.
“Are you going back to Jessica?” She asked eventually, tears in her voice.
“Not yet,” Nick said.
“What will you do?” Her head tilted up to look at him.
Nick shrugged with his free shoulder.
“Go after Mike, I suppose. Some way.” He paused. “What about you? Where will you go?”
Rebekah hesitated before saying, “I wanted to stay with you.”
“We can’t, you know we can’t. You shouldn’t even be here now.”
“I know, but I couldn’t not come.”
“I know.”
There was silence, and then in a miserable voice she said, “I suppose I could...go back to my aunt. Maybe she’s changed. Maybe she’s realised how much she’s missed me.” She paused, then added, “maybe pigs can fly.”
“Hey, come on,” Nick said encouragingly, hugging her tighter.
“Do you know,” she said, moving to wipe a tear from her cheek, “all the time on the island I knew that this was going to happen. Eventually.”
“What?”
“This. You know. The end. I always tried to convince myself that I could win you over...but I don’t think I ever believed it. Good things don’t happen to me.”
“Christ, you sound like I’m going to die.”
“You are dead to me,” she said. “If I can’t see you, if I can’t hold you like this...Then you might as well be dead. And that means part of me is dead too. And always will be.”
Rebekah cried softly, and Nick felt the tears on his chest, small cold drops of misery that fell sporadically upon him. A waste of moisture…wasted on him. Nick did not know what to do or say to ease her pain, this was the way it had to be, they couldn’t be together, couldn’t she see that? Social conventions wouldn’t allow it, they would be the subject of ridicule and scorn, and then there was Jessica, another tangled ball inside him waiting to be untangled. Had she been involved in the attempt on his life? He didn’t know, but he couldn’t stop wondering at it, a scab that itched.
Soon Rebekah’s sobbing quieted, and they lay silently together on the bed, all the while Nick feeling this great gulf opening between them.
“I always used to fantasise that we’d get off the island and get married,” Rebekah said. “Silly, I know, but I couldn’t help it. We’d live in a white house. Only a small house, maybe with a cat, I’m more of a cat person than a dog person, but if you really wanted a dog we could get a dog, I wouldn’t really mind. I don’t know, I could learn to cook, have tea ready for you every night when you got home from work. Maybe we could open up a clothes shop, I always wanted to own my own clothes shop, or design clothes, or something like that.” She paused. “I’d have made you a good wife.”
“I think you would have,” Nick said quietly, sadly.
Rebekah sat up in bed and looked down at him.
“I better go back,” she said. “It wouldn’t do for us to be in bed together when someone comes calling.”
“You could stay a bit longer,” Nick said, reaching for her.
Gently, she pushed his hands away.
“I could stay, but tonight...it’s better this way. I’m already so sad I could c
ry for hours. If I stayed any longer my heart’s just going to break. What am I on about? It’s already broken.”
She touched his hand, kissed it, picked up her discarded pyjamas, put them on, and then floated to the door silently and was gone, so completely the whole episode might have been a dream…except for the lingering scent of her, and a feeling of wretchedness so caustic that Nick thought about searching for Yilmaz’s pistol and putting it in his mouth.
◆◆◆
CHAPTER 12
They arrived at Victoria Town in the early afternoon, gently nosing in to the dock in the blaze of the midday sun.
The town looked sleepy from the water, only a scattering of dark figures occupying the chairs outside of the cafés and restaurants. The heat hung over everything like a suffocating blanket. Nick and Rebekah went up on deck to look at it as two young black men came running down the wooden dock to secure the cruiser; it was a breath taking sight. Victoria Town was bracketed on all sides by mountains, thin clouds hugging their tops like fine grey hair on old heads. Victoria itself didn’t seem like much for a capital city, supposedly home to thirty thousand people, the densest concentration of warm bodies in the Seychelles. It looked to Nick more like a sleepy fishing village, with its rough, white and cream buildings, and ragged multi-coloured awnings, but it was not an unpleasant sight, and was perhaps more inviting and homely than any line of skyscrapers or factories. But if its appearance was slightly less than cosmopolitan, it wasn’t set in the dark ages; Yilmaz had told them about the Natural History Museum, and the Codevar Craft Centre. And there were galleries as well, showing fine works of art.
Yilmaz, Agathe and Kate joined them on deck.
